Some computer systems have intelligent subsystems controlling and error managing their power distribution and cooling functions. These functions need to be resilient to a wide variety of failure modes in order to approach the non-stop running aspirations of their users. It is therefore necessary for the intelligence within them to be able to report the occurrence of failures which reduce such resilience.
It is advantageous for such reporting to be done via the supported systems, as they tend to have superior communications and man-machine interfaces. The problem associated with such reporting routes is that they are dependent on transient applications in the supported system, which are subject to being suspended and even deleted and restarted.
It is therefore desirable to provide a method of recording fault information within the subsystem, and ensuring that the information is maintained, even through a system powerdown, and then subsequently passed to the supported system and the people and/or systems responsible for its maintenance.
The object of the present invention is to provide a mechanism for achieving this.